Question that comes up a lot: How does trading work in this simulation? Basically, each player has two lists: one of the things they want (missing pieces to complete a monopolly) and things they offer (stray one-of-a-color property). Every move proran search a match between pairs and trios of players - to match what they wish for and offer. If such a match found - property is excahnged, whoever gets the expensive one, pays the price difference to ehoever had a cheaper one. I agree it is quite basic - and it is a little unfair to whoever trades a cheaper item. But my question is: what it is like in real life? When you trade a 100 plot for 200 plot - what do people do in this situation?
In my experience, it generally depends a lot on all the other factors involved as well. The person receiving the cheaper monopoly generally will want to charge an exorbitant price so that it is significantly harder for the other person to begin building houses right away. Generally, the way the game ends is with someone having 3+ houses on a monopoly on the second half of the board. Giving another player such a monopoly is opening an opportunity for them to win the game, so you have to have a plan for avoiding that (generally charging them enough that you can immediately build hotels on your cheaper monopoly and pray that they land on you several times before you land on them). If the other player has comparatively more wealth than you, sometimes a "hail mary" play is the right move where you force them to trade their 2 expensive properties for your 2 cheap ones. That way they still get a monopoly but you get the one that can potentially win you the game if you get the right luck. If I were to implement this programatically, I would try to determine a method for estimating my chances to win from a certain game state (maybe based on simulation results?). Have each player willing to make trades that increase their chances to win with some amount of bias towards creating monopolies. This estimate of chance to win should be based off your current properties (+houses/hotels), your money, your opponents properties (+houses/hotels) and money, and locations on the board (are you about to have to go past a set of hotels?). Perhaps this could be based on assigning several game features a "value" proportional to how much they would impact your chance to win. The value of your money is its dollar amount. The values of your properties are at worst their mortgage value. Their value is higher if you own another in that set, another player owns 2 of that set, the rest of the set is unowned, you have a large amount of cash, it is early in the game, etc. Their value is much higher if you own a full monopoly. Houses/hotels have a high value, but are balanced by the value of money increasing when you need liquid capital available to afford landing on opponent's properties without mortgaging/selling houses. Also worth mentioning that the more players there are, the less you should care about helping other players. In a 2 player game, you should be very anti-trade because any trade that your opponent is willing to accept theoretically makes it harder for you to win (assuming the other player is perfect). In an 8 player game, trading is almost the only way for anyone to get a monopoly (and getting a monopoly is almost the only way to win). That means that from starting out on even footing, it is beneficial for you to offer a trade where you and one other player receive monopolies even if you end off worse off in that deal because of it. It will make the player you traded with more likely to beat you, but it will give you a significant chance to beat the other 6 players. This mindset also will reduce the number of stalemates to near zero for games with more than 2 players.
Usually the monetary payment is much higher, 10x the difference or more. Another common trade I see is to take two of a cheaper property in exchange for 1 of a more expensive one, but that involve a different starting setup 2+2 and 1+1 rather than 2+1 and 1+2
You'd never want to make that trade, as even if you get an monopoloy off of it because your opponent gets a better monopoloy. Frankly put... this is a stupid decision. "I just need them to get lucky and land on mine and me not land on theirs." ...there is an exceptions where you get a mono but your trading partner does not, so then they make a same trade where they get a mono and the person they traded with does not till the person who has the most dangerous of the two monos simply won't be traded with as there is no benefit to giving them a mono that is better then the mono you are getter.
sometimes when I’m poor, my friends just decline the offer I’m making which clearly benefits them as it completes a set of houses more than I but they do it because they want a property which isn’t even more valuable and doesn’t complete a set So in this situation since my teenage friends have the financial discipline of a toddler I can just offer them an utterly trash trade that doesn’t include the brown, light blue or pink cards and they will accept it
Especially the auction rule. It seem in my case, many many people has ignore this rule, and it significantly slow down the game. Once i implemented the rule and started playing monopoly with my family, the game feel a shorter now. Still the game are still super flawed, and i would rather play something like than monopoly,, but hey its one of the rule i see to constantly been ignored.
@@hamizannaruto But the auction rule tends to cause more conflict (especially when you're playing with younger kids). So it solves one issue at the expense of making another (probably more important) issue even worse.
when you add in trading and especially the auction rule, games can actually take very little time compared to what people think And honestly, the big hated things about monopoly doesnt happen when games actually end in decent times, since you dont get that attached before its ripped away from them also, the fact there seems to be games that ends at 15 turns is kinda insane?
Yeah, it's sad that the game is hated by many because nobody follows the rules that make it fun and manageable. I'm like the only person I know in person who actually likes it and wants to play it. Despite my family never accepting my trade offers and games being abandoned and packed up I still like the game.
I remember a game where me and my mom was playing her ex's kids and him where he got mad at his daughter for not trading/selling cause it was more beneficial for her to hold than to sell a property, no matter what was offered. he said something along the lines that she was making it no fun. cant remember the setup of the board at the time as its been years, but its a memory.
@@KillerIntent1 it happens when you hold the only Monopolys and enough of the properties to stop the others from making new ones. The only way you can lose is to trade. Eventually you will have enough hotels to slowly drain all the players over enough time
@@alexanderelderhorst2107 Yeah, people should hate Monopoly for the right reasons. That is, Monopoly is essentially a dice rolling simulator with almost no strategic choices.
Monopoly still isn't a well designed game. Or rather, it wasn't really designed to be a game, if you go into the history it was actually a teaching tool about how rent seeking will inherently cause problems.
A few years ago my lil sister Joy and I decided to play Monopoly using our My Little Pony plushies. 5 hours later Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack were bankrupt. Fluttershy had so many monopolies and Twilight was just doing her best to survive and hope Fluttershy lands on one of her few remaining spaces. And Pinkie Pie had miraculously never landed on a single property throughout the course of the game. My sister and I had no idea how to explain it, Pinkie Pie would always land on chance, tax, free parking, jail, pass go, literally anything except property spaces, and she kept it up the whole time! Because of this she gained and lost very little money and her total stayed around $1,500 the whole time, she may as well have not played at all for how much she contributed to the game! Unfortunately we didn't get to see how long Pinkie's weird luck would last as our mom made us put away the game after 5 hours. We declared Fluttershy the winner and Twilight 2nd place even though she had less money than Pinkie, because at least Twilight actually contributed to the economy. Final results for anyone curious: 1. Fluttershy 2. Twilight 3. Pinkie 4. Applejack 5. Rainbow Dash 6. Rarity Rarity had some really terrible luck early on and had a very dramatic breakdown.
That would be cool if she does! However, I'd say the chance is not very high. It wasn't nearly as popular as Monopoly is in the rest of the world. For some reason Soviet Union wasn't too big on board games in the first places. Stuff we had was physics-based, so to speak, all those table-top miniature football, hockey, basketball and pinball machines...
3-4 player Monopoly is pretty fun if people play fast and follow the rules. My friends and I used to finish 3 player games in 20-30 minutes and 4 player games in 30-40 minutes in high school. The reason Monopoly usually takes forever is because people agonize over trades and other decisions, roll and count slowly, are way too stingy with property, and most importantly, dump tons of cash into the game with the likes of Free Parking. If people keep getting hundreds of extra dollars each time around the board, of course it's gonna take forever.
@@rubenverg ex: Pay $100 hospital fee, would go to center of board instead of the bank like it's supposed to. Then the next player to land on free parking can collect all the cash in the middle.
Honestly the real culprit is ignoring the auctioning rule. Once every spot on the board causes somebody to lose money the game does tend to wrap up. Granted, this doesn't last _forever_ because eventually the person who wants to buy a property will land on a property with enough money to buy it... But in the game that already takes about one and a half hours tripling or quadrupling the game time basically means that the game isn't ending.
the fact this video only has 17 views despite how well made it is, is a crime, keep up the great work! Edit: 315 is better but still nowhere near what this video deserves, lets get it to 1k!
Well, I mean it is only been a day or two since I uploaded it, right, let's give it some time? :) Seriously though, thank you sir, I am glad you enjoyed it!
When I play Monopoly it is never endless because no one is ever willing to let someone get a monopoly, even if they get one themselves. Then the game goes until someone gets a monopoly naturally or bails someone out in exchange for a monopoly, and they win because they have the only monopoly. Also we make weird deals sometimes, like sharing profits from a monopoly or granting players immunity for money.
I've been thinking about playing Monopoly where no deal is forbidden. For example, you could trade a house for whatever the next Community Chest card that player draws is. It would make for some interesting deals and strategies, and make alliances more possible.
@@piguy9225 Yeah that would totally be allowed in our version. There was even a game where me and my sister merged into a single corporation and combined all our money.
I find it interesting that the default starting money and salary both seem fairly well optimized to create the shortest median game. I wonder how much testing was involved in deciding on these values, or if it's a matter of luck and intuition that they were originally chosen.
I was surprised to find this too. I tend to think this is just a licky coincidence. I mean you will have to hire tens, maybe hundreds of people to just play monpoly all day long. I don't thnk original authors had resourses to do such a thing. Athough some coincedence getting it exactly right for both variables!
I didn't notice until two-thirds through the video that your sub count didn't have a K at the end! HOW?! Your work is amazing quality and yet you barely have double the subscribers of my stick figure math! Keep up the amazing work, hopefully your channel spontaneously combusts at some point.
Really cool channel and videos! Got recommended the minesweeper video about how rare an 8 is and I've now watched all the vids on the channel, was surprised at how few views were on them given how good they are, so hopefully the algorithm keeps sending even more people over like it did with me today 👍 (and given how fast I've seen the sub count go up over the last 3 hours relative to the raw number, it does indeed look like it's happening at least atm)
Thanks! I am glad that you liked it. Yes, something is definately happening to the channel and the numbers are growing as they never done before. So I am really greatful to you and to everybody who watched and liked my videos!
I heard about this edition. Kinda weird, no - given that Monopoly already has a reputation of being a bit slow.Are they trying to own their own criticizm this way?
@@mr.tadpole1697 I completely forgot about that one, I've only played it once. Unfortunately, I don't think it's plausible to calculate that, but I definitely think you're right.
"Longest Game Ever" doesn't only feature rules that make the game insanely slow, it features rules where you are actively at a disadvantage if you attempt to progress the game. Therefore, if you want to come out ahead, you actually shouldn't progress the game. Therefore, the game doesn't progress. At some point, assuming players actually do decide to progress, then you have the features that make the game quite slow, but then you discover an extra "catch". There are chance cards in the game that actively remove the large majority of progress. Therefore, the reversing of progress is in fact inevitable. Players must actively play to their disadvantage to race against the impending doom of the game becoming longer. As a result, the game shall never end. Now, how does the game in fact end? The only possible method (since there is no bankruptcy) is to accomplish getting your opponents in jail permanently, then desperately hope you can end the game before you hit too many chance cards that will either completely reset your progress, delay the game an extreme amount more, or reset the opponents out of jail.
The "games going on forever" problem could have been easily solved with some simple rule like 'for every accomodation pay additional 10% tax that goes to the bank'. The percentage would increase with every round with 5% or something similar. Eventually somebody would go bankrupt. This would be similar to the "cloud" in battle royale games.
@@chaotickreg7024 It's not about the cost, it's about the safety of nobody else having houses. Buying a hotel makes four houses available for purchase again.
I just discovered your channel thank to your minesweeper video about the 8 number. Your videos are really well done. You deserve so many more subs and views
Excellent work an analysis! It was more informational, better executed, more clear and contained hoveverall more original findings than most research papers I've read during all my time as a post-graduate students. I am now subbed!
My friends and I do an annual Monopoly marathon, with over 500 custom Community and Chance cards, in addition to game show elements added in. I'd love to see that simulated.
Hey! I have a video idea suggestion that I've been thinking about for a long time about chess, but could never get an answer, the video would be, what is the worst possible game of chess, I think coming up with an actual answer is as difficult as coming up with the answer of what is the best possible chess game, but finding an aproximation would be interesting, this would be done training a bot to play as bad as possible and putting him against himself, it would be a battle and whoever lost would be the winner, it will probably end in a draw, but the process would be interesting
Thank! I have thought about chess, I admit, but it is way out of my depth yet. In one of the next videos I am planning to give Connect-4 a stab - that's where I am now. But one of those day... Meanwhile, did you consider infamous "Fool's mate" to be a worst game of chess possible? As far as I know it cannot possible go worse than that.
Have you ever heard of Antichess? In Antichess it is compulsory to capture whenever possible and the winner is the first player to lose all their pieces. Also the Fool's Mate cannot be the worst possible game because if both players are trying to lose, the other player will simply ignore the mate in one.
The best way to play Monopoly is Timed mode, suggested in some of the instruction booklets. I like to go for 1-2 hours plus 3-5 turns depending on how the table feels. Then everyone mortgages their properties and most money wins.
isnt that what you do normally? we used to play it often with my friends and when it started to get late we would count the money the properties and the houses/hotels and decide who won with that
That’s an alternative game mode for people who actually like fun. But most of the time people play until everybody except one player is bankrupt, which is the default game.
Yes, a lot of machine learning algorythms are based on the same priciple. I am definately looking forward to try doing something like that - but still learning how these things work.
The two major house rules I've always known in Monopoly, and didn't even know were house rules until years later is the Free Parking money and the ability to bypass houses and go straight to hotels. The Free Parking money works by sending all money that should be paid to the bank from things like Chance, Community chest, and spaces on the board like Luxury Tax into the middle of the board, to be paid out to the next person to land on Free Parking. Really doesn't matter who gets that money, if the influx is high enough they're probably going to win the game, or else the Free Parking money just aids in the game becoming endless. Bypassing houses and going straight to hotels works by having enough cash to buy all the houses necessary to build a hotel AND the money for the hotel(s) themselves. If there's only 4 houses in the bank then you need enough to buy 12 houses and 2 hotels at least to build 4 houses on one property and two hotels on the other two. Except, as kids, I'm not sure we knew all properties needed houses (and they had to be spread out evenly) before hotels could be built, I didn't learn that until the Monopoly game on the NES. Slightly less problematic, this one, as this tended to make the game end much quicker, only going "endless" if enough high traffic squares were controlled by enough different players that money kept changing hands. On the other hand, if that many houses were already on the board, with enough people having enough money to buy straight to hotels, feels like we should already have been in endless territory.
1) The common Free Parking house rule adds much more money to the game than your proposed increase in salary. This makes games endless, barring spiteful trades to become a kingmaker as you spiral out of the game. 2) Suppose you have multiple monopolies, and are building houses. Which should be your preference? My gut says Blue > Orange > ??? > Red > Green. There are 8! permutations of preferences. Which is the best? 3) With a $500 start, it might be interesting to revisit the value of not buying properties in your other video.
How did the video take 2 months to get into my algorithm? Hope there's more to come from. I hope more people get their algorithms blessed with this because you deserve a much bigger following with this quality of content.
6:18 50-60 turns is more like 9-10 laps around the board. If the average die roll is 7 and the length of a lap is 40, then you will complete 1 lap approx every 5.7 turns. (This, of course, does not account for the effects of chance and community chest cards sending you to other locations - including "Go" - which would complete a lap faster. It also does not account for the "go to jail" space and cards, which slow your progress in completing a lap.) With a lap completed every 5 or 6 turns, 50-60 turns is about 10 laps.
I've always found Monopoly frustrating because of how generally aimless it all is, but I never would've expected it to so commonly permit endless games... Now this video is my own get out of jail card if ever someone tries to drag me into this awful game!
Endless games only happen as a result of players that refuse to make the trades necessary to acquire a monopoly. With "smart" players, someone will always win.
lol I remember one time we were playing with some teenage cousins and one who wasn't doing so hot landed on the others hotel on either park or boardwalk and owed like $4000. she lost completely her mind, it was absolutely *hilarious*
I actually used a rather simple approach. Each player has two lists - one of things they want (which is missing monopoly piece), one of things they can offer (which are stray one-of-a-color items). Each turn all lists are matched - if there is a match property change hands, whoever had a cheaper one, compensate the difference. Same for three-way trade, but A gives to B, B gives to C, C gives to A.
for a single game? if the game doesn't end in 2 hours you are doing something wrong. most games should be 1 hour max.. unless you are playing with 6-8 players, that will be about 2 hours..
This was an interesting project. You should take a look at Risk and see if there are any interesting questions there. For example, I once simulated Risk battles and found that there is a fixed ratio of attackers to defenders that will give you a 50% chance of taking over a territory. It's related to the expected number of losses you would have compared to the defenders. I can't remember the details, though.
Instead of the changes to starting $$, I have seen a good variant where you double the price of all properties. This tends to force more properties to goto auction and creates a better strategic experience. I would be curious to see if a similar effect could be made by just making starting capital 1/2 ($750)
Wish you checked the Free Parking reward. This is a popular house rule that just stretches the game out insanely. If you're unfamiliar, it goes like this: When landing on the Luxury or Income Tax space, or when drawing a Chance or Community Chest card, if a player is directed to pay money to the Bank, they would instead put this money in the center of the board. Of course, if the card awards money to the player, that still comes from the bank or the other players accordingly, and any other costs, such as paying $50 to get out of Jail, also go to the Bank. Whenever a player lands on Free Parking by exact dice roll, they collect whatever money is in the center of the board. Consider the assessor card or the property tax card....
this is why in parties we end monopoly games after an hour, then see whoever had the best position (Most money, properties, monopolies, etc.) and declare that the winner. Ex. An 8 Player monopoly game. 90% chance (exaggerated) it’d probably reach 1 hour of playtime. Assuming a move takes 30 seconds. Here’s the scenario: P1 goes bankrupt (Move 91) P2 survives, but they have only 1 property and $17. P3 goes bankrupt (Move 68) P4 survives with 10 properties, a railroad and orange monopoly, 13 houses, and $1198. P5 gets the KO on P1 (KO = forcing someone into bankruptcy by making them land on your property), plus 4 properties and $907. P6 gets a monopoly on dark blue, with 5 properties, 2 houses, and $329. P7 gets the KO on P3, along with $1398. However, they only have 2 properties. P8 has 3 properties, $719, but is in jail. We would rank it like this: 8th: P3 (Bankrupt on Move 68) 7th: P1 (Bankrupt On Move 91) 6th: P2 (about to die) 5th: P8 (P7 and P8 are close, but P7 got a KO and my friends treat Jail as bad (I think it’s a good thing in high pressure situations where the board fills up)) 4th: P7 (Less Properties are crippling, but a terrible situation with P2 and P8 allowed it to salvage the top half, or the disappointment spot) 3rd: P5 (P6 and P4 have monopolies) 2nd: P6 (P4 was the clear winner, but this is the mostly likely comeback player, 5 properties (which is great for 8 player monopoly standards) plus players having the possibility to land on dark blue if lucky could allow it to win if things go their way, even with the lack of cash) Winner: P4 (10 Properties and a sizible chunk of cash increases your trading leverage, but it gives you a huge advantage because you can pay off a lot, and the other players would have to pay you back often since you have tons of properties)
I have the old monopoly app, where I had a stalemate because I set the house rules as such that the game introduced too much money into the economy. Both me and the AI had all the monopolies evenly between us, but I we both had about 24 THOUSAND dollars so the only way either of us was going to loose was for one of us to land on the other's high rent property about 16 times in a row while the other avoids paying rent.
What makes Monopoly feel slow and interminable is the house rules, mainly no auction of undesired or unpurchasable properties by the player landing on it and awarding the "pot" to a player making a double 6 rather than that "pot" being payed to the bank as it should.
There is a relatively common (and bad) house rule of creating a stack from money that is paid to community chess and giving it to the player that leaves jail or something like that
as someone who made a whole video about how to win monopoly I found this rather fascinating however the exclusion of auctions greatly increases the chances of a game running long or endlessly. auctions can reduce the cost of territories and speed up territory acquisition. in the official rules a property once landed on is always either purchased or auctioned removing this means that some areas will not be taken on first landing. this not only makes monopolies harder but gives each player fewer titles to trade. it's also worth noting that in the base game bankrupt players give their property to the player who they owed too much money to this creates a snowball effect which can speed up games although snowball effects are often viewed as unfun/unfair they do shorten games and I feel like you would get shorter results if you included these mechanics. however I do recognize that these may be too difficult/time-consuming to program for this video and don't hold it against you in any way I just feel that this may bias the results.
11:11 Orange just completely lost the will to compete after 500+ turns. Had such a big lead through the whole game, then must have burnt out or something.
you could simulate auctions where all players have the same code without too much difficulty, I think. 1) different players would have different amounts of money, so unless two have the same amount, then one would win out by brute force 2) different players would have different properties, and completing the sets is necessary to build houses, so those players would be more willing to spend more 3) different properties have different payouts for landing on them, so players would pay more for more expensive properties so each player could base the amount they're willing to pay on a simple enough sum, including the previous 3 factors, and maybe some random chance, because no player plays perfectly
You do have a point, I guess there is a way to build an approximation of an auction. But, here is an example I thought of that I think shows it is not the same thing as with humans. Say, we are at the early stage of the game, players have most of the cash and a nice piece of real estate is up for grabs. One of several things may happen: - if there is no cap on bids - the one with more cash wins, but pays what other guy has + 1 dollar. - if there is a cap - they are stuck at the same bid - if it is random - I just introduce more randomness into the simulation - if it is proportion of cash - it would work, I guess, but this is not how humans do auction. WIth humans it is about outbidding by 1$ out of spite, acting on a whim, miscalculating future benefits, manipulating gullable opponents, failing to double bluff - I couldn't replicate that and decided jusr skip the whole auction thing altogether.
Here's an interesting houserule you could simulate: you can build houses without having a monopoly. And you can build house without building on all streets of the same. Color simultaneously. So you could have let's say 2 red streets one with a hotel and the other with just two houses. My estimate would be a shortened game length and less probability of endless games. And personally thinking it through. It's way more fun playing it that way in my opinion.
I think I tried an option when you can build unevenly - if I remember correctly, didn't make any significant difference. I didn't try the one where you can build without monopolies. I feel this will change the game completely and probably makes it way less likely to end in endlessness - I'd say fraction of a percent. as you should be really lucky for players to have exactly balanced sets of property.
I came up with a cool idea for Communist Monopoly. Instead of paying a fixed rent, the rent is related to how much money you have. The owner gets the same but the player either spends more with the extra going to the bank or less with the needed coming from the bank.
Well, I don't have any hard evidence, but I would guess it will lengthen the game and increase share of endless isgnificantly. Here we want Gini index as high as possible - for the rich to get richer, poor to get poorer. Although it would probably be a good lesson in living in hypotetical peace and harmony? I have another suggestion, to make it more competitive and closer to real communism, passing start will take away 90% of whatever you have over $200.
I love you videos and I just found you channel but what might be missing is the human factors within games, bad judgment, mistakes, errors, It could make very little difference but Ive been wondering, what actually causes a game to become endless? If you know what happens you could add things like taxes and raise them as the game goes on and you pass go and that would be a tax year so I don’t know. Would be very interesting.
You could implement some rudimentary scheming in trading: If one was to make a property trade that benefits the other Player more than you (eg: you have already got 1 of the colour you need and they have 2) then the trade shouldn't go through. And of course people are less likely to trade with people who are richer than them
Monopoly games often do reach an end, but the final stretch to that end is very drawn out, when people just run around until eventually one player gets enough bad rolls
That's the thing - even if you are sick and tired, you can't "commit financial suicide" even if you have too. And after enough laps around the board, you'll accumulate enough salaries that even the bad roll would not be able to offset. At least this is what simulation shows.
So, what is the trading logic that you implemented, and how do you derive confidence in its truth to reality? Real-life trading even among shrewd emotionless professionals can involve a lot of game theory.
I finally wrote and pinned a comment about that. In short - very basic. And I am quite interested in how off I am from real life? How actual real life monopoly players (from champions to teenagers) handle trade?
This simulation has a massive hole in it: *trading is not binary.* Under standard rules, no matter how many players you have, the only statistically possible way for a game to be "endless" is if no one gets any monopolies. So whatever rules you come up with, this basic fact will remain. There are only two ways to get a monopoly: getting lucky and being the first to land on all three properties in a set, and trading. If anyone has the only monopoly, they are essentially guaranteed to win, so it's in everyone's best interest to do whatever it takes to get one, even if they have to pay a premium or give someone else a monopoly as well. As such, optimal play requires *aggressive* trading. There is no such thing as "there's no trades to get a monopoly". Even in an 8 player game, you can trade for pairs and then trade again for a monopoly. Of course, everyone else will not want to give you a monopoly either, which is why you typically need to sweeten the pot with a monopoly for them as well or a lot of cash. Either way, if your game takes forever, you only have yourself to blame for refusing to make the necessary trades.
Here's what I agree with: Making n-way trades (where everybody can participate in one transaction) with probably reduce the number of endless games significantly - maybe down to zero. (I think there is still a chance of endless game with monopolies, although a much smaller one - but it is to be proved or disproved). Now, a "disagree" part: Do 3- and more way trades happe often in real life? I saw a video of a 5-way trade on some monopoly champioships. Props for them to make it work, but it was qute a struggle to get everybody onboard. I assume among non-champions anything beyond "I give you, you give me" may often be a problem. In this simulation I took a middle road - 2- and 3-way trades are made, but not more. (Partially because it was a pain to code). So is it a hole that the simulation does not do n-ways trades? I guess it is - but it just mirrors the reality.
@@GamesComputersPlay There's more ways to trade than just to immediately get a monopoly. Two players can trade to get a pair, and then trade later with other players for the monopoly itself. The game favors aggressively trading like this, since as your simulation shows, failure to do so makes it much harder to win.
I would have thought that Monopoly would have been actively encouraged in the Soviet Union. Monopoly is basically designed to highlight the failures of capitalism.
It was designed by a communist in the early 1900s if I remember correctly. So they'd probably encourage it when it was designed by that person. But when it became a very popular American Board Game, they probably would have burned their copies of it.
@@lizardgirl413 True if the rules are stretched to help out the players who are struggling, to make the game last longer. But that is more in tune with the spirit of socialism.
The one house rule I think would guarantee that the game will end is the one where you get to build houses on any property you own, regardless of whether or not you have the Monopoly
Hahaha, this is so true! I mean, I do write in a couple of other languages (mostly boring work stuff), but I would never say "I wrote a program in PHP", but I find myself saying over and over again "I wrote a program in Python". I don't know what it is about Python, but you are spot on!
tbh, having players deal with bankruptcy is a pretty major factor, as that allows one player to build a large amount of properties and having a better chance of building a dominating board
It can be a factor - but I would argue, it will not affect endlessness much. Things is, the bankrupcy rule kicks in only when someone just been bankrupted. So for an endless game - it does not make a difference at all, as the rule never been inacted - classcal or not. Now, it leave those games where only some players went bankrupt but some were alive. Turns out - there is not a lot of games like that - about 1% I think.
That's what we did as kids - just get some pieces of paper and a pen and that's your new "money". Also, looking back, it was a perfect example of how inflation work - everything with non-fixed price would become several times more expensive.
I loved this video and everything you put together to make this happen. I have two answers that hasn't been address (or maybe I didn't fully understand your analysis) in the cases you presented and I'd love to hear: 1- Endless games are not literally endless, right? You have a cap of 1000 turns set, and if players go through 1000 turns without having only 1 winner that accounts for an "endless game" if I understood correctly. So my question is, if you remove the cap of a 1000 turns and make it literally endless, would this show that all games have an ending? Maybe the longest game would last 50 thousand rounds, but my belief (and I would love to see the simulation data) is that all games eventually have 1 winner. 2 - I know this is not part of the rules of monopoly, but another test that came to my mind while watching is the starting capital. Every player gets the same, that's the rule. But what would happen if that is not equal? My guess is that the player with more starting capital would win 99,9% of the times. That's all! Again thanks for all you've done here, you have a new suscriber!
Hi, thanks, I appreciate it and glad that you liked it. Now for your questions: I think most of them will be truly endless. I am not fluent enough in math to prove it rigorously, but here’s my logic. If you look at what the wealth graph of a typical endless game looks like (11:05 is a good example), you can see all 4 players are amassing more and more money (tens of thousands by the turn 1000) and seem to on the trajectory to get more and more as the time goes by. Is it possible that some catastrophic event would happen (landing 50 times in a row on Boardwalk or something)? Possible. Yet, highly unlikely. I tried to simulate beyond turn 1000 to see how many of such games would end. I don’t have exact numbers in front of me - but as I remember, yes, there are a few, but there were fewer and fewer as the game length grew. In the end, I guess it is asymptotically getting close to some smaller number than I had at 1000 turns, but the difference is not huge (5% maybe, asI said - don’t remember the numbers). Will uneven starting capital affect the winning rate? It will, but it depends on how uneven we are talking about. Here’s an interesting example. If you checked out my other monopoly video, I mentioned there that the first player has a bit higher chance of winning than the last - 34% to 27% (about 20% or 7 pp difference, right?) I simulated how much money will offset this difference to make it even again: 1375, 1465, 1535, 1625. So 125 dollars will change your win rate about 3.5 percentage points, it looks like. How much will it change if you keep adding more money - I don’t know, something to test in the future tests.
@@GamesComputersPlay You totally rock man! I really appreciatte your response. So I think my only new unanswered question will be. Will you say that even in endless games for example an 8-player-game, one player will tend to be dominant? And I include that 11:05 graph in this, where you can clearly see that the dominant player grows more than the rest in time, so again, will you say in monopoly wealth tends to accumulate into one player's pocket?
Interesting that the USSR made their own Monopoly. Monopoly was originally known as the Landlord's Game and is supposed to show how capitalism inevitably leads to monopolies. I would've thought they'd have liked to keep the original. Also: no auction rule is normally why it lasts so long. It's supposed to be quick and high intensity.
Really, it was like last few year of the USSR's existance. I don't think they would ever do it during USSR's better years. Even USSR's Connect 4 had very limited edition.
1:50 in all of the times I ever engaged in a game of monopoly, trading properties happened almost never. People playing always assume it is in their best interest to not let anyone have a monopoly on anything if they can help it, so if someone actually gets monopoly anywhere is up to chance of landing on all necessary tiles (because rule of selling a property someone stood on and decided to not buy to other players also gets ignored routinely).
That would be right in a 2-player settings. However, in 3 or more player games - you still don't want to be on the cheaper end of the trade, but it is still not as bad as be one guy who didn't trade when other did.
not trading defeats the purpose of playing the game. i will never play this game again with a person that will not trade. im very good at monopoly and rarely lose.. so im always the person who trades with everyone, to make sure that every player gets a monopoly. this makes the game fun and more equal for all. this is the most important part, make sure all players get a monopoly...
@@willh1655 that's why I am not particularly fond of the game. It has never been fun, more of a boring slog to keep everyone busy for a couple of hours, and maybe talk over a bit as well. It would have been far more dynamic if people traded, like you said, but alas, no one in my family does that.
Its difficult for me to imagine Monopoly (without house rules) actually ending in a stalemate. Having a reasonable monopoly and building houses on is so powerful that competent players will find deals to make that happen. That may involve a 2-1 trade (balanced with a of money), or an interim trade to grab 2 of a kind first, but the player or two who figure it out will be light years better than those who do not.
Most obvious things is what if nobody can't form a monopoly (I think n-way trade can solve this, but how many real life players do 4-ways trades?). No monopolies - players lose cash slower than they accumulate salary money. Endless game. I haven't checked if all "endless" game don't have monopolies or games with monopolies also can be endless. It fills like they can, but I can't say for sure.
It’s a paradox. There is an infinitely small chance that a monopoly game would be endless. The more turns you go through, the smaller the likelihood that the game is endless gets. This is because at any turn a sequence of events that could end the game could happen; The odds of that never happening get smaller and smaller as the game goes on because all previous turns must also have not ended the game.
Would be very interesting to see the comparaison with Wealth of Nations, another game who is all about collecting monopolies, but has a quicker way to eliminate player, more monopolies available, a fixed amount of initial money for all player counts, forced auctions and basically nearly no salary (as the double tax and bad events are nearly as high as the revenue cases and good events).
Playing this game with family, we removed the rule that when getting a double you must pay the amount (double 6 is 6 millions for exemple) to not end the game as fast, usually there is a clear winner after a few turns (the first player to step on US and Russia in the old version, and the first player to step on US and China in the new version)
Monopoly was created to show how in a capitalist society one person would end up with all the properties and other players bankrupt. But the game can be endless which is a complete failure on the creator's side because that means a capitalist society is possible.
Someone figured what the worst way to play monopoly is 1) when a player bankrupts, their money and properties go to the bank, and they start over with the starting money 2) the game doesn't end until 1 player owns everything
You should do Bang! A friend and I were the only ones left and we could not kill each other for probably 20 minutes or so, even with the dynamite going around.
Without gaining monopolies, the game usually is endless because more money comes into the game than goes out. On average, the $200 from GO will last you the 5 to 6 undeveloped rents one lap will cost you.
Yep, possible and not too improbably (although unlikely). Theoretical shortest game I think is 2 full turns, I think (for 2 players). That one is rather unlikely, requires some specific dice results and soecific decisions by players. So compared to 2 turns, 12 is not that uch of a stretch...
There is another thing that would keep the game from being endless which is that there are only 30 of each bill. 30 ones, 30 fives, 30 tens, 30 twenties, 30 fifties, 30 one-hundreds, 30 five-hundreds a grand total of $15,140. There is always some strategy in what denominations you have even if the rules aren't followed correctly.
The official rules of Monopoly explicitly don't limit the money supply. "The Bank "never goes broke." If the Bank runs out of money, the Banker may issue as much as needed by writing on any ordinary paper." So limiting the supply would be a house rule.
